40 Days & 40 Nights: Porn

So I finally got through my Lent with Channel Awesome and all related material. It was otherwise an easy task, save the days I noted tweets from the producers or the very last day in which I had another 24 hours to do and thought it was already over. Already caught myself up with a few of the videos I haven’t watched since last month, along with the first part of Suburban Knights. Looking good off the bat, though I’m noting acting mistakes such as shifty eyes, wincing at actions where there should be none, looking at the camera, and other amateur ticks that keep you from delving too deep into the work. Mind you, I’m as amateur as they come, and considering the weight of what they have created, it’s really a non-issue. It’s worth checking out should you enjoy fantasy and pop culture on any level, so….boom!

Now comes the next 40 days & 40 nights…what to do with myself? I thought on that as I watched fellows rip Duke Nukem Forever, and I found it difficult to come up with. Sure, I thought on this before and considered some good options, but the lot of them were too early or improper to be giving up at this time. There’s of course Neopets, which I’ve sadly (gladly?) jumped into again, and it would be yet another Internet item I could lose to gain more time. Despite this I’m currently working on dealings with other users, so dropping it cold turkey as of right now isn’t in the cards. Will possibly be for the next run through, so huzzah for that.

Talking D&D: The Well of Worlds

As a gamer and reader, I consume fiction pretty damn fast in regards to gaming. It’s one of the things that irked my first DM, in which I read so many supplement books, yet had no idea how the hell to play a Cleric. Even so, I learned and retained a lot of things even he had glossed over, which has allowed my scope of the D&D games history to be very wide. The same thing happens with me when I play video games. That should mean I have pretty good memory, right? Not necessarily, because I still manage to forget names of people I meet at least once a week, yet still know solutions and specific plot details of games I played over 10 years ago. Need to transition this capability of mine into the real world somehow.

That is beside the point, which is I’ve read a lot of historical fiction within D&D, and in my pursuit of understanding it more I bought Elder Evils, a book detailing specific end of the world plots the DM can challenge against PCs (and probably “win” considering the Big Bad at the end of each). I was actually playing through one of these scenarios under the same DM, but I was kicked out before things came to a close, and seeing as I was no longer obligated to refrain from reading this book as per the DMs wishes, I bought it from eBay (and lost my soul in the process). Also not the point of this discussion, but just a means to give context. I will delve into Elder Evils in due time.

Conversations with a Therapist #7 – If There’s a Shooter, Blame the Anime?

So I spoke a bit with my therapist on “Cartoon Violence”, of which I think I was getting a lot of at that age. Cartoons had a huge appeal to me, that is for sure, with their vibrant colors and wide ranging stories dealing with real life scenarios vs. the outlandishly loud magic bang kind (seriously, it’s a flying spell, so just stop yelling). My horizons got a little broadened via the help of a family friend/brother, who had plenty of anime in his hands. He was into anime before anime was considered cool, and showed what America was missing out on in terms of story and quality in their animation.

But all that is beside the point, and the point being cartoon violence, which is one of the key things anime had over American animation. In terms of firsts, Vampire Hunter D was quite possibly the first display of graphic violence I’ve seen through animation (strange considering the newer Bloodlust, which was tame in that regard). Since then, I’ve come across countless atrocities of violence done against otherwise fictional characters, and have become quite desensitized by it all. Mind you, I still get freaked out by Tetsuo’s transformation in Akira, which is just nasty sick. Seriously, feel free to not click that link, and not just for spoiler purposes, because that’s only one hell of a spoiler, but will also make you sick to your stomach. Amazing animation, just…god damn.